Seeing the Wood for the Trees: The British Foreign Office and the Anglo-American Trade Agreement of 1938

The Anglo-American Trade Agreement of 1938 was signed against a backdrop of escalating unease in Europe & a faltering policy of appeasement of the dictators. It is widely accepted that the Agreement was concluded more for its political than for its commercial value. Yet the negotiations were no simple affair, dragging on for over nine months & coming near to breakdown on several occasions. The complex negotiations are well documented, but the role of the British Foreign Office in determining policy towards the Agreement is less well known. What emerges is a picture of internecine struggle between the Foreign Office & the Board of Trade over the direction of the negotiations. As the talks became bogged down in technical detail, the Foreign Office made repeated representations to put the political value of the deal before commercial considerations & adopt a more conciliatory stance towards the Americans. The pleas of the Foreign Office were made all the more difficult thanks to American inflexibility & Washington's determination to bargain hard. The talks were eventually resolved in the wake of the Munich agreement when both sides realized the time was right for a show of Anglo-American solidarity, & not because of the exertions of the Foreign Office. Yet this examination of Foreign Office activity during negotiation of the Agreement is illustrative not only of how the Agreement was closed, but also of the suffocating power of British appeasement policy & the very determined belief of the Foreign Office in the centrality of achieving closer relations with the United States in this dark prelude to war. Adapted from the source document.